Affirmative Action

Affirmative action

affirmative action and positive action refer to policies that take • race, • ethnicity, or • gender into consideration in an attempt to promote equal opportunity or increase ethnic or other forms of diversity. The focus of such policies ranges from employment and education to public contracting and health programs.

• The force towards affirmative action is twofold: 1.to maximize diversity in all levels of society, along with its supposed benefits, and 2.to restore perceived disadvantages due to clear, institutional, or involuntary discrimination

• Proponents of affirmative action argue, that the disproportionate representations, results from covert, institutionalized and involuntary forms of discriminations that permeates the fabric of society; particularly in societies that have had a long history of racial, ethinic, or sex based discrimination.

Such acts of discrimination may take many forms. Some are overt such as stereotypes (eg. women are only fit to be secretaries and housewives, and blacks are great entertainers and sportsmen—modern day gladiators but little else). Others are covert, such as "old boys" clubs, that tend to favor racially similar new members

Myths • One can not hope to create a color blind society by practicing color blind policies • While a few studies claimed that affirmative action undermined the self-esteem of women and minorities, • The claim that one can not redress one form of discrimination by introducing another is a play on words that uses the same word "discrimination" to refer to two different things. Racial, ethnic or sex based discrimination is often based on unfounded, often irrational and deeply ingrained prejudices. • Affirmative action is a response to a statistically observed inequity in representation, reproducibly demonstrated by social scientists in many societies with a history of discrimination

Types • Affirmative action is generally established for: • racial minorities. • ethnic minorities. • underprivileged castes (such as in India). • women. • the physically disabled. • those who served in the military.

Opponent Argument • Some opponents say affirmative action devalues the accomplishments of people who are chosen because of the social group to which they belong rather than their qualifications.[ • Some people also feel that affirmative action is discrimination in itself since it judges people by their ethnicity. • Opponents, who sometimes call affirmative action "reverse discrimination," further claim that affirmative action has undesirable side-effects in addition to failing to achieve its goals. •

They argue that it hinders reconciliation, replaces old wrongs with new wrongs, undermines the achievements of minorities, and

• encourages groups to identify themselves as disadvantaged, even if they are not. •

It may increase racial tension and benefit the more privileged people within minority groups at the expense of the least fortunate within majority groups (such as lower-class whites)

• Conservative commentator Dr. Thomas Sowell identified some negative results of race-based affirmative action in his book, Affirmative Action Around the World: • affirmative action policies encourage nonpreferred groups to designate themselves as members of preferred groups • (e.g., upper and middle class blacks), detriment of the least fortunate among the non-preferred groups (e.g., poor whites or Asians); thereby resulting in net losses for society as a whole